1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronics and, more specifically, to digital-to-analog converters.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
A single array-based integrated circuit (IC) current digital-to-analog converter (IDAC) can utilize a relatively large amount of chip area since each bit of the array should be large enough to reproduce a replica input current with sufficient accuracy, such that each transistor in a bit supports the output current within the operating-point constraints of the output circuit. Also, device matching is improved with increasing device area. Some IC applications involve multiple, different IDAC operations. Implementing such circuitry using multiple, independent IDAC circuits can be prohibitively expensive in terms of the required amount of chip area.